6 April 25 • 2019
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JN exclusive
The Start-Up Nation Takes Failures in Stride
JERUSALEM
T
wo days after our fractious,
inward-looking election left us
exhausted and dispirited, we
Israelis turned our eyes skyward. The
Beresheet project of SpaceIL, an auda-
cious, privately funded effort to land a
probe on the moon, was
nearing realization of its
five-year mission. In the
manner of everything
Israeli, few had paid
attention to the effort in
the weeks and months
leading up to the land-
ing attempt, but at “daka
tishim” (the 90th and last minute of a
soccer game), everyone tuned in.
Beresheet began in 2014 as an effort
to claim Google’
s $20 million prize for
a private landing on the moon. Despite
displaying a mockup of the Beresheet
(“In The Beginning”) lander in Ben-
Gurion Airport for three years, where
hundreds of thousands walked past it,
the project interested only a few space
geeks. Google’
s prize went unclaimed by
the 2018 deadline and other competitors
dropped out, but the little Israeli space
capsule that could chugged along.
Beresheet’
s dramatic launch in
February as a hitchhiker on a SpaceX
Falcon 9 launch vehicle briefly graced
the top of Ynet, Israel’
s largest news
website, but it fell off the homepage a
few hours later. Its five-week trip to the
moon in ever-increasing concentric
orbits didn’
t receive a fleeting mention
during a political season that dragged us
through muck and mire.
On April 11, though, we all tuned in
to the live video stream from Beresheet
headquarters. Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu sat in the front row. President
Reuven Rivlin and scores of schoolkids
watched from Jerusalem.
The ship left orbit successfully and
began its descent … 25 kilometers …
22. After its leisurely flight, Beresheet
was careening toward the moon’
s craggy
surface at breakneck speed. We held our
collective breaths. The altimeter clicked
down … 18 … 15 … 10. It wasn’
t slow-
ing. Mission control lost contact. A gasp
escaped my daughter’
s lips. “It’
s so stress-
ful,
” she said.
Mission control regained contact. The
crowd cheered. So did we. As the little
ship approached the moon’
s surface, a
bearded, kippah-clad man said, “Trying
to start the engine.
” No luck. Trying
again. And again. Silence. A man in the
control room clamped his hands behind
his head in frustration. The other engi-
neers and scientists remained glued to
their computer monitors, typing com-
mands on their keyboards.
The speaker returned. The landing
wasn’
t successful, he said.
The crash brought me back to a bright
Saturday morning in Florida more than
16 years ago. The families of Ilan Ramon,
Israel’
s first and only astronaut, those
of the other astronauts and hundreds
of others, gathered at
Kennedy Space Center for
the expected landing of
Space Shuttle Columbia.
Their lives and an
Israeli Shabbat afternoon
calm were shattered by
news that the shuttle had
disintegrated upon reentry
to Earth.
The connection between these two
events is more than it seems. Each time,
Israel lifted its collective head from its
usual immersion in the Holy Land’
s daily
traumas. Each time, we suffered losses.
In one case, it was seven astronauts’
lives;
in the latest case, it was our chance to
claim that Israel would be the fourth
country to land a vehicle safely on the
moon.
The loss of Ilan Ramon left Israel
determined to return to space. Beresheet
was the spunky startup trying to do that.
But we know many startups fail. We
know that Moses didn’
t make it into the
Promised Land. We’
ve had so many loss-
es, we know how to deal with them. We
lifted ourselves off the ground, shrugged
our shoulders, wiped away the tears and
got back to work. ■
Alan D. Abbey is media director of the Shalom
Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. He is the author
of Journey of Hope, the Story of Ilan Ramon,
Israel’
s First Astronaut.
Alan D. Abbey
Israelis in Tel Aviv react after watching Beresheet spacecraft fail to land safely on the moon,
April 11, 2019.
Ilan Ramon
AMIR LEVY/GETTY IMAGES
Yom